CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER SEVENJoey slept late the next morning. It hadn’t been very late when he got back to the house the night before, and he had first waked at his usual time, but a reluctance to get up and face the world had been in him, and he had gone back to sleep again. In the light of morning the experience of the night before seemed more remote than when he had gone to bed, but he still felt a little queasy about it. When he finally appeared in the living room Mr. Ben had finished his breakfast and was sitting before the stove reading an old magazine, puffing on his pipe. He looked up and grinned.
“Those two run you to death?” he asked.
“No, sir. We didn’t go very far. We got a possum. I thought we were going to hunt for a coon.”
“They usually end up with possums. That Charley’s too smart to tangle with a coon if he doesn’t have to. He usually lets them alone unless there’s somebody with a gun along. Did you have a good time?”
Joey didn’t say anything for a moment. He was afraid that Mr. Ben would think he was a fool if he told the truth, but the affair had puzzled him so much, and been so distasteful to him, that he wanted to share it with someone and talk it out. “No, sir,” he said, finally. “I reckon I didn’t.”
“I wondered if you would.”
“They were quiet until Charley treed a possum and got to the tree, and then they began to whoop and holler and Odie hit Claude and knocked him down, and kicked at him, and hit him again and made him climb the tree. Why did Odie hit him, Mr. Ben? He’s littler than Odie is, and he was scared.”
Mr. Ben took the pipe out of his mouth and looked at Joey for a moment. “I guess I should have warned you that something of that sort might happen,” he said. “What else went on?”
“Claude had to go out on the limb and jump up and down. I thought he was going to fall and hurt himself, for the limb broke. And then when they got the possum they put the ax handle over his neck and pulled him up and broke it. His neck, I mean. I reckon I wouldn’t have minded so much if they hadn’t acted so … so … I mean, they yelled and jumped around, they were … well, they acted like they were crazy.”
“So,” Mr. Ben said. “I know what you mean. I guess Sam must have been giving them a hard time.” He struck a match on the chair and lit his pipe again. “I’ll try to explain it to you. In the first place, their lives are different from yours. You have a nice house and nice clothes and your father’s good to you. You don’t really have many worries. Their father isn’t like that. He’s a mean sort of man, and having to try to get along without any money on land that’s worn out has made him meaner. He’s got a grudge on the world, and takes it out on anybody he can. Most people fight him back, but the boys can’t. He beats them whenever he feels like it, often for no reason except that he feels like beating somebody, and they have to take it. After they take a certain amount of it, it piles up on them, they build up a head of steam, and they’d blow up if they didn’t find something they could take it out on, like the possum. … The possum’s a sort of safety valve. You see what I mean?”
Joey stared at Mr. Ben, rather appalled at the pictures the old man’s words had conjured up. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I reckon I do, but why does Odie act so mean to Claude? He was even going to kick Claude.”
“Odie’s a lot like Sam,” Mr. Ben said. “He’ll be just like him by the time he’s grown up. Sam bullies them both, Odie bullies Claude, and Claude’s soft like his mother. I don’t know what will happen to him. I wish I could fix it.”
“Yes, sir.”
The pipe had gone out again and Mr. Ben relit it. “Now, then,” he said, puffing clouds of smoke. “I know that the business last night made you feel a little sick and you probably don’t ever want to see those boys again, but you will. They live too close, and we have to go over there sometimes, and they’ll be over here. They’re worked hard and never go anywhere, they have to wear old hand-me-downs and don’t get enough to eat, and you’re an object of great interest to them. Now that I’ve tried to explain some things to you, don’t you think you can make some allowances and get along with them?” He knocked out the pipe on the edge of the stove. “Incidentally,” he said, “a possum’s skull’s so thick that you can’t kill it by knocking it on the head. The way they killed it is the best way.”
“Yes, sir,” Joey said. He still didn’t like the affair of the possum, but he was beginning to understand the rest of it and was already feeling some sympathy for Odie and more for Claude. Mr. Ben had got through to him, although he didn’t think he wanted to go possum hunting with them again.
“You’d better have some breakfast,” Mr. Ben said. “Charley’s outside. I forgot to tell you.”
“Yes, sir,” Joey said, pleased that the dog was there. “I’ll go feed him.”
He went outside. The dog was sitting near the steps and his tail wagged slightly when he saw Joey. The boy got four biscuits out of the can and descended the steps and sat down on the bottom one. He wanted to make the dog come to him this time, to have Charley acknowledge that he realized how Joey felt toward him and to show that he trusted him. Now that Joey was able to fully understand Charley’s life, from what he had heard about the lives of Odie and Claude, his heart went out to the dog more than ever, for Charley didn’t even have the scant resources of the two boys. Even they bedeviled the dog, jumping on him and yanking him about by the tail; he was the most oppressed of them all.
Joey extended a biscuit, crooning, “Come on, Charley, come on, boy. I won’t hurt you, you know that. You know it.”
The dog cocked his head. He stood up, took a step, and sat down again; it was obvious that a struggle was going on within him. He wanted the biscuit, but like any normal dog he craved affection too, and he had never had any. He had long since accepted the fact that he wasn’t going to get it, had done his work and maintained his dignity as well as he was able; now he was being asked to change the viewpoint of a lifetime. He wanted to do it but the habit of caution was so strong in him that he still couldn’t quite conquer it. He whined softly, got up and took another step, and sat down again. He had never been so close to Joey before; two more steps would have brought him to the biscuit, but he couldn’t make them.
Joey kept talking to him, softly, hoping that this would be the time that Charley would come all the way, and finally realized that he would not. He knew that Charley wanted to, for his eyes and the set of his ears showed it; another low whine confirmed the impression. He leaned forward as far as he was able without getting up and laid the biscuit on the ground. Charley wagged his tail widely, to show his own feeling, lay down, and stretched out his neck and took the biscuit. This time, however, he didn’t go off with it. He ate it where he was, wagging his tail meanwhile. Joey gave him the other three biscuits in the same fashion and sat watching as he ate them, smiling. He knew that he had gained a little more, and decided to go squirrel hunting for a while.
He went back into the house, put on his hunting shoes and coat, got his gun, told Mr. Ben what he was going to do, and went out. He stood for a moment wondering where to go, for he had hunted along the north side of the Pond several times now and wanted to get into new country. He finally decided to hunt between the Pond and the Chickahominy Swamp, for he had never been in that territory and wanted to see what it looked like. He whistled to Charley, and they moved off past the barn and down the path which descended through the woods to the road in that direction. Once on the road he followed it through the avenue of tall cypresses that grew along the south shore of the Pond until he came to the spillway, crossed that, and turned along the stream that came out of the Pond and ended up, miles away, in the Chickahominy River.
Charley moved out, and Joey followed a somewhat southeast direction in the valley of the stream. The country was rather flat and low there, with a good deal of old cypress in it; it had a different feel from the higher, gently rolling land on the Pond’s north shore and he wasn’t sure he liked it as well. There were occasional thickets of greenbrier, tangled and impenetrable, and a different sort of quietness; presently he began to come to swampy areas that he had to go around, and the greenbrier increased. It was not an open woods; the farther he went the less he could see around him, the shorter his vistas were, and the more he felt closed in. He consciously kept his direction in mind, watching the sun; he had learned that much. He hadn’t heard Charley; the dog had been gone for quite a long time, and Joey wondered what had happened to him. He stopped and stood still for a while, listening, with his mouth slightly open.
It seemed to him that he had stood there for a long time, half hypnotized by the silence, when he heard the dog. Its voice was different; instead of the usual rolling bay there was a chop, an excited barking, in it, and it seemed to be moving. Joey was puzzled, for he had heard nothing like this from Charley before. He stood in indecision; he didn’t know whether to start for it at once or wait until it settled into something familiar, and while he waited a large dark bird came sailing in from the direction of the dog and dropped into the woods a hundred yards or so in front of him.
It had appeared with such unexpectedness, and dropped into the thick woods so quickly, that his view of it had been fragmentary; nevertheless, he had an impression of dark, barred wings and a snaky neck, a tail spreading and tipped with a lighter color. It couldn’t be a hawk, he thought, looking like that. For a moment he was puzzled, and then his heart began to pound. It was a turkey! A wild turkey!
A turkey, and close to him; even now it might be coming his way. He began to shake, and his mind was suddenly full of confusion. All of the methods to kill a turkey he had ever heard whirled around together in his head. He wanted to run toward it, he wanted to stand still, and he wanted to do both of these things at once. There was a greenbrier thicket between himself and the turkey, so thick that he could see nothing. He finally decided to stay where he was for a moment, watching, and just as he decided to do this the turkey came around the right-hand side of the thicket.
His breath caught in his throat, for it was a beautiful thing, shimmering with a dark iridescence, its head moving, taking slow steps. It came a few yards farther and Joey exploded out of his frozen state. His gun came up in a single motion, and he pulled the trigger. Nothing happened; he had forgotten to push off the safety in his excitement, and as he stood there desperately pulling on the trigger the big bird wheeled and with darting quickness ducked behind the greenbriers again. Joey finally realized what the trouble was, and as he started to run shoved the safety forward. He reached the side of the thicket half sobbing with anxiety and excitement, ready to shoot on the instant, but the turkey was gone. The woods were as silent and empty as before.
His feet dragged as he climbed the hill to the house again, and he carried the gun over his shoulder like a stick of wood; all of the pleasure of being in the woods, of being in the world at all, had gone out of his life. He had had that desire of all hunters, a turkey, over his gun barrels, and through his own ineptness it had got clean away. He had acted like the most amateurish of all amateurs, and been so cast down by his defeat that he had given up any further thought of hunting squirrels, of hunting anything, and turned home. He was so disorganized that it was not until he got to the old barn that he recalled Mr. Ben’s advice, to the effect that if he ever got into a flock of turkeys and broke them up he was to come home at once and get the old man so that they could return to the spot and call the flock together. He stopped dead when this thought occurred to him, for it was like a revelation from Heaven. All was not lost; there was still a chance. He had not shot and scared them; they would still be trying to get together again, and if Mr. Ben went back with him, with the turkey call, they might still get a shot. “Great day!” he exclaimed, and started to run.
He came running around the corner of the barn, expecting to see Mr. Ben there waiting for him, and instead saw the two White boys sitting on the steps and Charley lying in his usual place in the yard. Charley, with his odd prescience, had known he had to quit and had taken a short cut back to the house; what had brought the White boys was a mystery. They were looking the other way and fortunately didn’t see him; he had time to drop to a walk before they realized he was there. He wouldn’t tell them about the turkey for the world. It was to be a secret between Mr. Ben and himself, for he remembered what Mr. Ben had said about White and the turkeys Crenshaw had found; he was vexed that the boys were there now, for he couldn’t say anything.
Odie and Claude saw him then, and got up from the steps.
“Hi!” they said together. “We thought you’d like to go squirrel huntin’, so we came over.”
“Hi!” he said and added, craftily, thinking that Mr. Ben could get rid of them somehow, “I reckon I better ask Mr. Ben first. I was going someplace with him.”
“He ain’t here,” Odie said. “He was gone when we come in. They was car tracks in the lane, so I reckon somebody got him and took him somewhere.”
All was lost, then, at least for now; the turkeys would doubtless flock together again before Mr. Ben got back, and they would have to get them another time. He didn’t want to go squirrel hunting again, particularly with Odie and Claude, but it occurred to him that if he didn’t they might go off and blunder into the place where the turkeys were and either frighten them away, tell their father, or—worst of all—kill one themselves. After his own performance he couldn’t bear to think of this possibility. He would have to go with them.
“I’d like to go,” he said. “We can go up this side of the Pond.”
Both boys began to grin, and Odie walked over to the porch and picked up a shotgun that Joey hadn’t noticed before. It was by way of being a museum exhibit; it was a hammer gun, double barreled, so rusty that it looked extremely dangerous, and the stock had been broken at one time or another and wound around with brass wire. The barrels must have been thirty-two inches long, and the entire gun was a little taller than Claude when the butt rested on the ground. It was old, very old, a twelve-gauge. Joey decided to be a long way from it when it was fired, for it was the most untrustworthy-looking gun he had ever seen.
As they started out Joey hoped there would be no performance like the one with the possum, but when Charley treed the first squirrel it appeared that he need not have worried. The two boys seemed to be in a state of grace and without tensions. The dog was at the foot of a huge beech, and as if by agreement the three of them took positions that more or less surrounded it and all stood looking up, each searching his own sector of the tree. Joey wanted to be the one to find the squirrel, but he couldn’t see it; he was a little chagrined when Claude gave tongue.
“I see him!” Claude said, in his deep voice. “I done got him cold. Gimme the gun, Odie.”
They apparently had an agreement that the one who first saw the victim was the one who got a shot at it, for Odie walked around the tree and handed Claude the gun. Joey watched in fascination as the small boy hoisted the gun, which seemed to dwarf him, and pulled back both hammers. He took a step or two and shot. There was a tremendous roar, flame spouted two feet beyond the muzzle, and the entire forest seemed to tremble; it seemed incredible that Claude wasn’t driven two feet into the ground. The squirrel fell out of the tree, Charley grabbed it, and after the usual chase had to give it up. Claude put it into his pocket and grinned at the other two. “I reckon that fixed him,” he said, and he looked so small and so triumphant and with it all so droll that Joey had to move off, turn his back, and pretend a coughing fit to keep from laughing aloud.
“That’s sure some gun,” he said, when he had got control of his amusement. “I thought it was going to knock you down.”
“It’ll knock me down if I ain’t set for it,” Claude said. “It’s a buster, and that’s a fact.”
“Yes, sir,” Odie said. “You don’t keep a-holt of it, it’s liable to kill at both ends. You like to shoot it?”
Joey wouldn’t have shot it under any consideration. “Thank you, but I reckon not,” he said. “I’m used to my gun; I better stay with it. Would you like to shoot it?”
He had never made this offer to anyone before and it popped out before he realized what he was saying, but he didn’t regret it. Somehow, because of the incident just finished and Mr. Ben’s talk, the two boys weren’t odd and dubious strangers any more. He felt differently toward them, and they, because of his offer, felt differently about him. They didn’t draw together to communicate secretly with nudges but smiled and nodded.
“Sure would,” Odie said.
“Sure would too,” Claude said.
They set off again, and the feeling between them held for the rest of the afternoon. The next two squirrels were shot with Joey’s gun, one by Odie and one by Claude; they both had a little trouble changing from a hammer gun to a hammerless one with a safety, but they both managed to get their squirrels. Joey saw the next squirrel first and killed it; the fifth one got away from them. It was in the top of a very tall cypress, and after being dusted several times jumped out, spread itself, and half sailed and half fell to the ground. It bounced a foot into the air when it landed and then ran straight at Joey. Odie, Claude, and Charley all knew this maneuver and began to chase the desperate beast as soon as it hit the ground, but Joey had never seen a squirrel do this before. He had a fright; he thought the squirrel was going to attack him, and when he saw the squirrel, the dog, and the two boys all bearing down upon him he froze; he couldn’t have moved to save his life.
The squirrel ran between his legs, and Charley was so close behind it and so intent upon it that he ran between Joey’s legs too and upset him. The two boys hurdled him as he fell, and the whole pack went roaring on for a few more yards until the squirrel came to a hollow at the bottom of a tree and disappeared into it.
By the time Joey got to his feet again he had realized that the squirrel had only run in this direction because that was the way it was headed when it hit the ground, and hadn’t time to look about. He was quickly over his fright and began to laugh. Odie and Claude were laughing too when they came back to him, and they stood together laughing.
“Great balls of fire! We like to run you down!”
“We like to stomp you!”
“I thought I was charged by a man-eating squirrel,” Joey said. “Great day, I was scared for a minute. I was too scared to move.”
“Charley moved you. He moved you good.”
“Sure did.”
“I didn’t know a squirrel would jump out of a tree like that,” Joey said. “I got a little mixed up.”
“They’ll do it, do you push ’em,” Claude said. “He was all the way in the top, he didn’t have no place else to go, so he spread out like a flyin’ squirrel and turned loose.”
“You looked real funny fallin’ down,” Odie said, and they laughed together again. “I wish we could get a couple more, but we better quit. We get back too late, Pa’ll wear us out.”
“Sure will.”
Odie stuck two fingers in his mouth, gave a piercing whistle for Charley, and they turned back toward the house. When they got there, Charley was waiting in the yard and Mr. Ben was sitting on the porch steps. He had a suit and necktie on and was freshly shaved; he had apparently been to town. Charley looked longingly at the biscuit can, but Joey decided that he had better not feed him with the boys there.
“Sure liked shootin’ that gun,” Odie said. “She’s so pretty and so light it’s just like holdin’ up a stick.”
“Sure did too,” Claude said. “Thank you. She kills good, too. Y’all want our squirrels?”
“No, thank you,” Joey said. “Don’t you want mine?”
“You keep it,” Odie said. “We had a right good time. Pa turns us loose, we like to go again sometime.”
“I would too,” Joey said. “Thank you for stopping for me.”
“Sho!” Claude said. “Good-by.”
“Good-by,” Joey said, and watched them walk around the corner of the house with the dog following them. He turned for a final look and disappeared after them.
Joey sat down beside Mr. Ben. “I wish I could have fed him,” he said, “but I thought I better not.”
“I think you did the wise thing,” Mr. Ben said. “It might hurt their feelings. Did you have a good time?”
Joey told him about the hunt, and about the squirrel that ran at him. “Sure scared me for a minute,” he said, “but I did have fun. They weren’t like the night of the possum hunt. That Claude was funny when he shot their gun. I thought it was going to knock him down, or blow up or something. I really had a good time with them, Mr. Ben. They’re different now.”
“Don’t count on them always being like that,” Mr. Ben said. “The way they act depends on how rough Sam’s been on them, and I guess he’s had something else on his mind lately and let them be. I mean it when I say not to get too close to them, Joey. You’re liable to have another bad time if you do.”
“Yes, sir,” Joey said, and took the squirrel out of his pocket. It was curled up in death; its small paws were over its eyes, as though it had tried to avoid seeing its approaching end. As Joey stared at it an odd and piercing little pain of regret entered into him. He had a surprising and fugitive wish that he hadn’t shot it, which he quickly suppressed; how could he be a hunter and not shoot anything? Nevertheless, he turned away from it; he didn’t look at it again. “Will you skin it, Mr. Ben?” he asked.
Mr. Ben nodded, and Joey tried not to think of it any more. To avoid thinking of it he ran over the events of the day in his mind and suddenly remembered the turkey. “Great day!” he said. “I forgot the most important thing. I had a shot at a turkey and got so excited that I forgot to push the safety off.” He went into the affair of the turkey in great and excited detail. “I reckon I’d have killed him,” he said, suddenly mournful, “if I hadn’t been so dumb. Gosh hang it, why did I have to do that?”
“You got buck fever,” Mr. Ben said. “I guess almost everybody gets it the first time they have a shot at a turkey.” He looked at the sky. The sun was almost down and shadows were long across the yard. “You wait here,” he said. “It may not be too late. I’ll be right back.”
He got up quickly and went into the house, and soon came back with his everyday clothes on, carrying his old L. C. Smith double-barrel gun. “Come on,” he said. “If we hurry we might hear them. Take me back where you saw it.”
As they hurried down the path behind the barn he explained what they were up to. “It’s almost time for those turkeys to go to roost. They fly up in trees for the night and make a lot of noise, and we’ll sit there and be still. If they’re still anywhere nearby we’ll be able to hear them fly up, and then we can leave quietly and come back in the morning early and call them together when they come down again.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’ll separate, and sit still and listen. Be as quiet as you can when we get near the place.”
“Yes, sir,” Joey said. The excitement was building up in him again, and although Mr. Ben made pretty good time for his age, it seemed to Joey that they were crawling along.
They crossed the bridge, turned down the stream, and finally came to the place where the greenbrier thickened and the swampy places began. The sun had dropped by now, although the sky was still light; the woods, the bark of the trees, had taken on a little of the sunset colors of the sky. Joey was by this time in a fever of anxiety and indecision; he couldn’t locate the spot, for the woods looked everywhere the same.
“It must have been around here somewhere,” he said. “I wish I could be sure, Mr. Ben. I sure wish I could.”
“This will do,” Mr. Ben said. “I’ll stay here, and you go on for maybe a quarter of a mile. Get on a high place if you can, and sit down and be quiet and listen. If you hear their wings beating against the branches when they fly up don’t make a sound. Locate it as near as you can and wait awhile. I’ll call you when I think we ought to go.”
“Yes, sir,” Joey said, and went on. He tried to hurry and be quiet at the same time, avoiding stepping on dead sticks or making sucking noises with his boots when the going got swampy. Finally he thought he was far enough from the old man, found a little knoll, and sat down in the leaves. He sat there listening with intense concentration, turning his head this way and that with painful slowness as twilight slowly turned the woods dim around him.
The profound silence stretched out, the trees grew black against the slowly darkening sky, the forest floor about him began to grow dim; Joey longed desperately for the sound of wings, but heard nothing. Finally Mr. Ben gave a “Halloo,” and he got up and started back. He was greatly disappointed. Halfway back to Mr. Ben he was startled half out of his skin when a barred owl let go with a volley of blood-chilling hoots in objection to him. He picked up his pace, blundering into bushes and scratching himself; he had to call several times to find Mr. Ben.
“Hear anything?” the old man asked.
“No, sir. Nothing but that owl. Did you?”
“Not a thing. They must have got together somewhere else. Well, some other time.”
“Yes, sir,” Joey said sadly. Then he brightened. “But I’ll get one yet. I got a mind to start practicing on that call, if you’ll let me.”
“Help yourself,” Mr. Ben said. “Another thing you could do is always be still and listen for a while when you’re in the woods toward sunset; turkeys roost where night catches them, and you may find some anywhere.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, we’d better go, or we’ll be here all night.”
They started out, stumbling around, for it was dark now. Joey followed Mr. Ben, holding his gun upright before him to ward off branches and underbrush. The stars had begun to come out, twinkling high above the interlaced limbs over their heads, and far behind them the owl spoke to the night again.